Only to reappear in the same flash of light above the exaggerated cranial of the ice giant. Talion's metal boots landed at the base of the beast's blue neck. His left hand reared up and with a long familiar mental summon, the spectral hammer of Helm Hammerhand appeared.
Talion's hammer fell and the giant's head snapped downwards, chin hitting its chest from the tremendous force of the blow. The ringing noise of metal hitting metal was loud and clear as the magicks of Helm's warhammer pulled at the very soul of the ice giant. Before the giant could muster a response to Talion's vanishing trick, he jumped off the giant and threw Urfael behind him.
Rapidly dismissing the hammer, Talion pulled up the familiar form of Azkhar. He drew the string back and an arrow seamlessly appeared, the green elfshot mumming to Talion with a malevolence he didn't remember them having. As Talion flew backwards, his arrows flew forward, embedding themselves in the giant's back.
Using his wraith to change the direction and length of his fall, Talion impacted the frozen ground right next to where Urfael had landed. In front of him, the giant was beginning to react to Talion's attacks against it but effects of the hammer's blow made it sluggish. The fight was still moving at Talion's direction.
Tearing Urfael's wickedly sharp tip out of frozen Skellige turf, Talion did not run forward as he did propel himself forward, digging into the wraith world to double the ground each stride ate up. He slid to the left of the ice giant. Talion brought up the serrated edge of Urfael and as he slid along the frozen dirt, past the bare blue ankle of the giant, Talion sliced into the fleshy and fragile ligaments of the giant's ankle. Urfael's eversharp edge parted the giant with uttermost ease.
At the same time as he began his slide, Talion projected his wraith self to the opposing side of the giant. The green wraith yanked Acharn out of its own sheathe and plunged the spectral copy of Talion's single-edged throat cutter into the middle of the ice giant's foot, pinning the limb to the ground.
Talion felt the wraith copy disappear and return to himself. As he came out of his slide, gauntlets and sabatons digging furrows into the dirt as he slowed his momentum and sprung back to his feet, Talion briefly reflected that he didn't feel anything at the fight he was engaging in. Talion didn't feel like he was fighting. No heavy breathing or rush of emotions. His humanity had been drained away and even without Sauron's control he still didn't have it back.
That only made Talion's resolve to fix his ring and regain what he had lost strong.
So when Talion charged once again at the ice giant, it could perhaps be said that his bladework was faster than before. Talion brought Urfael to bear in a series of diagonal slashes. Lower left to upper right, reset to neutral, then lower right to upper left.
As Talion broke into this flurry of slashes, he warped his powers around his form and blade, making it so that his slashes cut deeper and reached wider than they naturally should have. Then Talion bent his wraith self into his physical self. After he completed the full set, Talion warped. With inhuman movement, Urfael and indeed Talion's entire body to the exact start of the sequence. Talion launched the two rising diagonal slashes again, faster than before.
Then reset. Again, but faster than before.
Then he poured additional power from the now finite reservoir of his ring, more than Talion could remember using before. But before he had always been surrounded by orcs and other foes. Before his enemies had been pack creatures that came to the defense of their wounded out of simple group self preservation for the alone perished in Mordor. This ice giant was against Talion and the giant was alone.
Again, again, again, again, again, again, again, again, again, again, and again, and again, and again.
Each repetition faster and hitting deeper and harder than the sequence before it.
Urfael didn't break the crude fur, wood and bone armor of the ice giant, it shattered it under a scant few flurries conducted with all the power and skill of a swordsman who had had centuries to hone his craft. When the armor was removed, Talion's sword moved into the gut of the ice giant.
With a roar, Talion broke from the sequence, swinging Urfael in a sweeping horizontal slash.
It severed the now exposed spine of the ice giant.
The bisected corpse slumped to the ground. Talion's blows had not weakened the giant for the finishing blow, rather his blows had excavated the gut of the giant, ripping and tearing and flensing fat, muscle and organs until the only connection between the giant's upper and lower halves was a pillar of white bone.
The Giant of Undvik had not even had the time to properly scream at the wounds Talion had inflicted on it's flesh before the finishing blow was struck.
Talion rose from the slight crouch he had fallen into, taking one hand off Urfael as he sheathed the faithful blade. He took the moment of quiet that had fallen over the village green to examine himself. Talion found, to his dimmed surprise, that not a fleck of giant blood stained his armor, his chain mail, or even the ratty black cloak he wore.
'Well at least I don't have to subject myself to ocean water.' Talion thought. 'Salt always ends up being more corrosive than orc blood, somehow.'
The noise of snow crunching under feet came up from behind him. Talion turned around and saw that the Skelligers had retreated almost completely out of the village green. All of them except for the leader, the man with the sword. The leader was old, not a true greybeard yet by Talion's reckoning, but he was in his twilight years of being able to fight. The man with the sword certainly looked like he was really feeling every year that his body had weathered but his back remained straight and his gaze never left Talion's cruelly shaped mask. Talion raised his appraisal of the man's character for that alone.
Looking over the leader's shoulder, Talion saw the rays of the sun begin to break through the thick blanket of storm clouds that gripped Undvik in its clenched fist for what Talion could deduce had been many days, maybe even weeks. But the magic the ice giant had called upon to produce the storm and master the snow to its whims had been broken by it's death at Talion's hands. He could feel it gradually, then all at once tumble away into the formless nothingness that was the natural state of the unseen world. Yet as the magic of the ice giant tumbled away, Talion felt that there was something strange about the unseen. But the gnawing pain of the Ring as it broadcasted its pain Talion was more important than a queer twist of magic.
The man, who could only be the Jarl Harald that Ulf and Erik had discussed down by the shore, cleared his throat. "I…I am Harald an Tordarroch, Jarl of Undvik."
At the words of their jarl, the huscarls of Clan Tordarroch tensed. Axes were gripped harder and round shields brought up to attention. It was clear that the followers of the jarl were ready to rush to his defense at any provocation on Talion's part.
"Talion."
"Well met…Talion." Jarl Harald continued, "You have done Clan Tordarroch a great service by slaying Myrhyff. We…are in your debt and honor bound to that debt." The Jarl seemed pained by his words, his huscarls too, and Talion took note that that Jarl looked at any part of Talion except the mask he wore.
Good. Fear mixed with debt makes for a potent servant. Talion had a recollection, courtesy of Erik, that these Skelligers were a people who took particular care of their honor. And had Talion not just slain the greatest threat to their entire people in living memory -or at least within the living memory of Erik Angbornsson- of his own free will?
Talion was now certain that the Jarl would not balk at what Talion was going to ask of him. Else he'd be torn apart by his own people for the dishonor the Jarl had brought upon the clan.
"Indeed you are, Jarl Harald." Talion words hissed out from his mask. "And you will soon be free of that debt to me, for I am in need of something that you can provide."
Jarl Harald wetted his lips before speaking. "Clan Tordarroch stands ready to fulfill its debt, as it always has."
Talion's bloodless lips curled up in a smile. "You have a forge of some renown in your possession Jarl Harald an Tordarroch and I have need of a forge. And an elven hammer."
And what could Jarl Harald an Tordarroch, a man who thought he was staring at a harbinger of Ragh-nar-Roog its and was forced to grapple with the realization that he and his entire people, down to the youngest babe, were in the debt of a Wraith of Mörhogg in the flesh. A demon who the tales said lusted every moment of every day and night to bring about the unending torment of all.
So the Jarl would do whatever the demon asked for. Of course he would, the afterlife of his ancestors depended on it. For what would the response of the gods be if they learned Clan Tordarroch was indebted to the warriors of Mörhogg, on the now apparent eve of the final battle of creation? That there existed the possibility that the clan would be honor-bound to side against the forces of creation?
Of course he would do what the demon clad in black and steel asked.
Of course he would.
A short time later, Talion loomed over the famed forge of Clan Tordarroch, an elven hammer scavenged from the ruined tower on the northern coast of Undvik -there was some explanation he had been given on why one had been procured for Talion so quickly, but Talion didn't much care to listen to the exact details about how a smith's grandfather had looted the tower some decades ago on a drunken dare- clutched in his hand. It had a look of elven craft in its appearance. The consistent pattern of engraving across the hammerhead and the flouted designs of the rest of the metal.
Something about it weighed wrong in Talion's hand but the urge to repair the Ring required more attention than a hammer of unfamiliar make distract him.
He was still feeling the gnawing pain inside of himself, a pain that he likened to his stomach being far too empty and in desperate need of nourishment. This was, of course, not what Talion was actually feeling, he hadn't needed to eat since his first death. Talion barely had a body, he just had a mortal shell for his soul to work as it had always done. Habit more than preference had made Talion keep his body when he was inducted into the Ringwraiths.
What he was hungry for was spiritual instead of physical. Talion's amateurish binding of the wound had broken down during his fight with the ice giant and the full brunt of the spiritual wound now bore down upon him.
But pain and spiritual weariness were old friends to Talion, and so he weathered them, focusing on the final preparations for the reforging. Then the sound of boots shuffling on stone came from behind him.
Ah, he had forgotten about Jarl Harald. Talion had assumed the man had left to see to his people after showing Talion to the clan forge. Apparently not.
Talion's thoughts paused for a moment as he pondered.
"It would be best if you went back down to the coast line, Jarl Harald. This process will be dangerous for mortals." Talion spoke over his shoulder to the man. "It would be wise to pass the same message along to your people."
"...My thanks. When will your 'work' be completed?"
"That will be obvious. You best hurry." Talion heard the jarl leave the forge and begin his trek down the mountain side. Why had he done that? Warned the jarl that is?
He certainly didn't have to. The jarl's usefulness to Talion was over the moment he had told him where the forge was and delivered the elven hammer into Talion's hands. The jarl's fate should have never crossed Talion's mind after their brief interaction. It was what a Nazgul would have done.
It felt…pleasant, nice even, to have done a good deed purely for the benefit of doing good again.
Now it was time to take action. Talion held forth his empty hand, and guided more by instinct than conscious thought, summoned forth a globe of baleful green fire. He then fed the fire into the dormant, but not unlit, forge. Talion twisted the fire to his will, stoking the forge to full blaze in a few moments. Talion did not know exactly the process to forge a ring of power, Celebrimbor had merely been using Talion as the physical conduit for the forging of the New Ring, but Talion remembered how Celebrimbor had manipulated the unseen to give the New Ring it's awesome power. And the Ring Talion wore now remembered the motions of its own creation, the right hammer strokes in the unseen and the material realm that gave it shape, form, purpose and power.
They worked together, Man and the Ring, in a common cause that united them both. Talion reflected that such a bond had never existed with Celebrimbor. No, that elf lord had only ever used Talion as a stepping stone on the way to his own goals.
Talion began to immerse himself in the wraith realm, pulling his sight and being deeper into a realm seldom even glimpsed by mortal eyes. A realm where one could gain a more complete understanding. Talion looked down at himself and saw the familiar sight of his wraith self, the green glow of his figure matching the green flames that now burned, both in the physical and unseen, in the forge. He was ready to begin forging. He did not know what would happen in the unseen world once he began his work, but Talion was not deluded enough to imagine that this work was going to be a pleasant experience.
But the work was too important to shy away from on account of pain.
Still guided by instinct, Talion raised his ring hand above the flames and put the head of the hammer into the soul flames. Luckily for his soul, Talion was not forging a ring of power by himself.
There was a sizzling noise, like flesh burning, and then a splat of molten metal on his sabatons. Talion looked down to see that, like the failed items of a glass blower, his elven hammer had melted away. Now he was just holding a fluted metal rod, not a hammer.
What had…?
Ah, now he understood. The knowledge floated up from the murk of Talion's mind, unprompted by his own mind, but needed nevertheless.
Now Talion understood what he had done wrong. He couldn't use any normal, ordinary hammer for such a task. It was almost sacrilegious to try to do so, at least to Talion's mind now. The exact tool needed was pushed into Talion's thoughts by the Ring, another sign to the ringwraith of the true partnership that existed between him and the band of gold. The contrast between it and his time with Celebrimbor felt even more acidic and stoked the never dying flames of anger Talion felt towards the elf lord.
He threw the fluted rod to the stone floor of the forge, then Talion reached into unseen, and withdrew the almost forgotten form of Turánn, the mithril hammer that had been wielded by elf and maiar so long ago in the forges of old Eregion to create the Rings of Power. Now that he grasped the impression of his old hammer, for Talion could now remember that he had cast aside the spectral impression of Turánn aside as a weapon of war after he had taken Helm's hammer as a trophy, once more Talion felt the wraith world settle into a shaper definition.
Yes, this felt right to him. It was right that at this moment, in this undertaking, that Talion use his copy of this great forging hammer. A whisper ran through his thoughts that only he was worthy of it. And it was Talion's understanding of Turánn that he now grasped. An understanding, a remembrance of silvery mithril metal that lacked most of the history, and taint, that had run through the true Turánn, but retained the power that a more mortal and uneducated Talion had ascribed to the hammer.
This was the proper tool to heal a ring of power.
The inherent murkiness of this plane dropped away, and everything stood before Talion's eyes with such sharpness and a rigidity of shape and purpose. The spectral Turánn throwing, forcing the unseen world to define itself before its wielder's eyes so that the magic of the world could be worked properly.
So Talion of Mordor, once of Gondor, plunged his spectral hammer into the soul fire of the forge, quickly withdrew and raised the now burning hammer high above his helmed head.
Maybe the world paused for a moment to consider the momentous action that was about to happen, maybe it didn't.
But if the world didn't understand what Talion was about to do, it felt was Talion did when the ringwraith brought the hammer screaming down to impact the gold ring, specifically the part of the ring with a burning wound that emanate wrongness to the wearer's eyes, on his left hand.
And as Talion raised up for the second hammer strike, the well defined spectral around him fell away into nothingness, and in its place rushed in the winds of magic, of Chaos, angry and raging at the Order imposed on them.
They were met with another hammer strike to the golden band, and the Globe shook at Talion's action.
A/N: Current events (aka a war in europe) have held my attention since they started but here's a new chapter. I hope the build up to the reforging was worth the read. I might have made the ice giant a chump when I might have said he wouldn't be but the trade-off was getting to the ring business sooner. Apologies if you were particularly excited about that. Now I need to figure out how to make a fundamental and high concept event in the Witcher world make sense when even the author only used vague terms to define the things Talion is about to be messing around with. I'm honestly pumped to do that. Catch ya'll next time.